Mitch Ivey, famed swim coach, banned for sexual misconduct

Two-time Olympic medalist Mitch Ivey, of San Jose, has received a lifetime coaching ban two decades after a history of sexual misconduct with Bay Area female swimmers first became public.

Ivey, once a teammate of Mark Spitz at the famed Santa Clara Swim Club, has 30 days to appeal the decision that was made last week by USA Swimming's national board of review.

Ivey, 64, could not be reached for comment. He did not participate in a hearing, according to an email dated Nov. 23 from USA Swimming's legal counsel.

U.S. swim officials and their lawyers declined to discuss the case Monday.

"All proceedings before the national board of review are confidential," a USA Swimming spokeswoman said in a statement. "With every case, there is a 30-day appeal period that must expire before USA Swimming can publicly share a final decision."

Ivey, who swam at Stanford and Long Beach State, won a silver medal at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City and bronze four years later in Munich -- both in the 200-meter backstroke.

He replaced the famed George Haines as coach of the Santa Clara Swim Club in 1974. By 1988, he was a member of the U.S. Olympic team coaching staff.

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The allegations against Ivey date to the early 1980s when he coached at Concord Pleasant Hill Swim Club. Ivey, 33 at the time, had a relationship with Suzette Moran, a 16-year-old swimmer from Pleasanton-Foothill High. Moran, now a mother of three living in the Los Angeles area, said Monday she wasn't called to testify in the recent hearing for Ivey.

But it appears her willingness to recount the events of 30 years ago led to the ban. USA Swimming said in June it did not uncover enough evidence to continue a 2011 investigation of Ivey. It also said it couldn't find Moran, who is on Facebook and other social media sites.

The sequence of events dismays the woman who discussed her relationship with Ivey two decades ago on ESPN's Outside the Lines. After the program aired in 1993, Ivey was let go at the University of Florida, where he was Southeastern Conference coach of the year all three of his seasons in Gainesville. Ivey later coached at two private Florida schools, the last from 2003-05.

"I'm not exactly sure how they sleep at night," Moran said of U.S. swim officials. "They could have done this years ago."

Although Moran says she had a consensual sexual relationship with her coach, "it was his job as an adult to walk away. Even if I didn't feel like a victim, it is statutory rape. End of story."

San Jose lawyer Robert Allard, who represented Moran, said, "There is no room in society for coaches who sexually abuse or molest underage athletes. Mitch Ivey was protected for nearly 30 years by a culture within USA Swimming that continues to this day."

Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a three-time Olympic champion at the Los Angeles Games in 1984, welcomed USA Swimming's ban on Ivey.

"It's imperative that all coaches know what the rules of the game are," said Hogshead, who swam for Ivey at Concord. "They can't see old coaches with a long record of sexual abuses" go unpunished.

Hogshead, senior director of advocacy at the Women's Sports Foundation, had testified in USA Swimming's initial investigation into Ivey two years ago.

Ivey, who according to public records lives in Florida, is the latest coach to be punished in connection with sexual misconduct of female swimmers. In 2010, former San Jose Aquatics coach Andrew King received a 40-year sentence after pleading no contest to child molestation charges that in some cases dated to the late 1970s. In May, former Washington, D.C.-area coach Rick Curl was sentenced to seven years in prison for child sexual abuse.

In the wake of allegations from the King case USA Swimming, in 2010, created a Safe Sport Division to scrutinize coaches and provide a place for athletes to report abuses.

Last year, Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, asked the Government Accountability Office to expand child abuse reporting laws to include athletics. Miller declined to discuss the Ivey case Monday because of the ongoing investigation in Congress.

But his spokesman Peter Wippy said, "Whenever a bad actor is stopped, that's certainly a good thing."